The Rogers International Commodities Index

With a grand total of 35 listed commodities, the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI) tracks the most commodities among the different indexes. The RICI is the brainchild of famed commodities investor Jim Rogers, who launched the index to achieve the widest exposure to commodities.

As with the other commodity indexes, the RICI includes traditional commodities such as crude oil, natural gas, and silver. However, it also includes quite exotic commodities, including silk and adzuki beans. If you’re looking for the broadest exposure to commodities, the RICI is probably your best bet.

The RICI was launched in 1998 and has performed extremely well. Between 1998 and 2006, its total return was 265.58 percent.

The RICI is a production-weighted index, assigning weightings to component classes based on their actual global production value and rebalancing the index every December.

Commodity

Weight

Commodity

Weight

Crude oil

35%

Sugar

2%

Wheat

7%

Platinum

1.80%

Corn

4.75%

Live hogs

1%

Aluminum

4%

Cocoa

1%

Copper

4%

Nickel

1%

Cotton

4%

Tin

1%

Heating oil

3.75%

Rubber

1%

Unleaded gas

3.75%

Lumber

1%

Natural gas

3%

Soybean meal

0.75%

Soybeans

3%

Canola

0.67%

Gold

3%

Orange juice

0.66%

Live cattle

2%

Rice

0.50%

Coffee

2%

Adzuki beans

0.50%

Zinc

2%

Oats

0.50%

Silver

2%

Palladium

0.30%

Lead

2%

Barley

0.27%

Soybean oil

2%

Silk

0.05%

If you want to invest in the RICI, you can do so through the RICI TRAKRS offered by the CME. TRAKRS (pronounced trackers) are similar to the futures contracts offered by the CME. To trade the RICI TRAKRS on the CME, use the ticker symbol RCI.